So, it was all Fannie and Freddie's fault and the predatory lenders to unworthy borrowers played no part? ....

4 Paul Bowman said...

.... This was "market forces" at work, not the GSE's.

7 hw said... Mortgages financed by Wall Street from 2001 to 2008 were 4½ times more likely to be seriously delinquent than mortgages backed by Fannie and Freddie.

12 Bloix said...

What hw said. Blaming the GSE's is a standard right-wing dodge to exonerate Wall Street and place the blame for the crisis on Big Government.

21 jep said...

The premise of this analysis, that GSEs dominated the subprime market is almost surely misplaced....they may have marginally moved some clearing prices...they were simply not that big a player compared to that market as a whole.

Plenty more of similar sentiment too. But let's see what the professionals themselves thought. Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, in the Washington Times, December 10, 1999;

Fannie Mae brings private capital, management and efficiency to the task of expanding affordable homeownership in America. At the center of the housing finance system, Fannie Mae is a major force in the expansion of minority homeownership.

Since Fannie Mae doesn’t make home loans ourselves, we back mortgage lenders by buying or securing loans they make in the primary market; the company does not serve minority borrowers directly. Nevertheless, Fannie Mae outperforms the overall market when it comes to financing minority lending, according to data provided to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Federal Reserve data gathered under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Last year, Fannie Mae financed $46 billion in home loans for more than 450,000 minority families, 77 percent more than the previous year.

By far, Fannie Mae is the largest single source of funds for minority homebuyers in the nation. Notably, Fannie Mae finances more minority homeowners than the federal government does through the FHA.

It ain't braggin' if you can do it.

...we will devote 50 percent of our business to low- and moderate-income homebuyers.

However, Fannie Mae’s commitment to underserved families goes well beyond the HUD mandate [that HUD Sec'y, and Fannie's boss, Andrew Cuomo had just announced]. Five years ago, Fannie Mae launched our Trillion Dollar Commitment, a pledge to invest $1 trillion to help 10 million underserved families become homeowners or obtain decent rental housing by 2001.

Bold by HSIB.

We can almost sympathize with the task of Housing Cause Denial--Sisyphus didn't have it so tough.